A senior official at the NCAA’s Eligibility Center acknowledged in an e-mail that his organization submitted an inquiry to ACT, Inc. regarding the test score of a highly regarded basketball prospect, an action attorney Don Jackson contends is racially motivated.
Jackson was outraged the NCAA would request the ACT examine the validity of the score and that it would make such a request when there was no evidence of fraud. The prospect, who is African-American, only took the ACT once, so there was not one of those hard-to-explain score jumps that have led to scores being nullified in the past.
Jackson, whose firm The Sports Group is based in Montgomery, Ala., chose not to name the prospect he is representing in this case, or the school where that athlete is enrolled and plans to compete.
An NCAA spokesperson told SN by e-mail that the inquiry to the ACT “merely provides notice to the testing agency that the staff has identified a statistical anomaly based on student-athlete academic certification data. The inquiry does not, however, ask the testing agency to investigate a particular score.”
Jackson called that position “counterintuitive,” claiming the NCAA Eligibility Center notified the affected university the test score was being examined before the ACT notified the prospect his score was in question.
Jackson said the NCAA’s process and actions in this case are “profoundly, openly and unapologetically racist as hell.” He is suggesting he could take the matter to federal court.
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